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As we enter the stride of the capital campaign, we want to take a moment to recognize and thank the amazing Town Hall members who are also supporting the renovation and preservation of our 100-year-old historic building!

One such duel-donor is Lynly Beard, a Town Hall Loyalty member.

What drew you to Town Hall and made you want to become a member?

Town Hall provides a sense of community and an educational sandbox. You can go and listen to people you know learn about a topic you know nothing about. You are surrounded by interesting, curious people who want to stretch their comfort zone or share a passion. It is all the best parts of school – continuous learning minus the required homework!

You’ve been a member of Town Hall for 5 years. What keeps you coming back year after year?

Getting to see people that you hear from everyday like Steve Inskeep, as well as a chance to see major players and rising stars from many different fields. If you are jonesing for some science, or want to hear music, you can get it at Town Hall.

What has been a highlight or particularly memorable experience you’ve had at Town Hall?

There have been a number of things that were inspiring and enlightening, and some that were surprising. I really enjoyed Tavis Smiley, Edmund Wilson, Rebecca Eaton and a program with Sherman Alexie, Jess Walters and Jonathan Evison. Most recently I admired and enjoyed Diana Nyad tremendously.

You’re also contributing to our capital campaign to renovate our building—thank you! What are you looking forward to most about the renovation?

A new HVAC system so there can be year-round events, and of course, improved and enlarged restrooms!

Why is it important to you keep your membership during our Inside Out year?

Town Hall is going to come back with a much improved venue – I feel it is important to support it while it renovates. After all, my friends didn’t drop me when I remodeled! I believe the passion and vigor that Town Hall encourages and promotes will still be going strong during this time. I am looking forward to going out to different neighborhoods for Town Hall programs with diverse and new audiences and fresh viewpoints.

Town Hall members get the first chance to buy tickets for some of our most popular events. Our three member presales kick off on Monday, July 18. Presales start on Monday at noon and ticket sales open up to nonmembers on Friday, also at noon. Listed below are the dates and details for each:

Member Presale 1, July 18–22, 2016

Member Presale 2, July 25–29, 2016

Member Presale 3, August 1–5, 2016

If you’re not already a member and want to get in on the action, here’s where you can sign up for Town Hall membership.

Town Hall’s ongoing partnership with community partners—like The Pride Foundation—shows the value and power of bringing different organizations together to address important social issues. The Pride Foundation is a regional community foundation that inspires giving to expand opportunities and advance full equity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people across the Northwest. Over the course of Town Hall’s 2015–16 season we have had the pleasure of working multiple times with The Pride Foundation and CEO Kris Hermanns.

On October 15, 2015 Kris joined Black Lives Matters cofounder Alicia Garza on stage for a conversation on modern feminism produced and presented by Women’s Funding Alliance. The next week Kris introduced litigator and author Roberta Kaplan and The Stranger’s Dan Savage at Town Hall in a discussion about the Supreme Court overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. This spring The Pride Foundation joined 24 other nonprofits at Town Hall to share their mission and highlight our collective impact during our GiveBIG: Lunch Break event on May 3.

We are so excited to now be partnering with The Pride Foundation in bringing Scottie Jeanette Madden to Town Hall to discuss her book, Getting Back to Me: from girl, to boy, to woman on Thursday, June 23, 2016. Everyone who attends this event will be invited to stay for an informal hangout with Scottie after her talk. When asked about her organization’s decision to support the event, Kris commented: “Pride Foundation is proud to partner with Town Hall Seattle for this timely event. When we come together to add more diverse stories of our experience with the world, we strengthen the ties that draw us together as a community through knowledge, empathy, and understanding. We are grateful for the opportunity to spend an evening with Scottie Madden and friends, especially during this difficult moment in our community and country.”

We very much appreciate Kris and The Pride Foundation for the incredible work that they do in our region, and for partnering with Town Hall to bring these important voices to our stages! Partnerships with organizations like The Pride Foundation are central to Town Hall’s goals of providing programs that highlight topical issues and encouraging broad and diverse community discussion.

Every year over eighty Town Hall members enable matching gifts through their employers for volunteer hours and philanthropic donations, providing an additional $25,000 of revenue for Town Hall each year. We want to thank these members and volunteers for donating their time and money to Town Hall each year and for making their donations go even further by enabling corporate matching funds. We are also grateful for those corporate entities whose employee matching programs have such a direct impact on Town Hall’s success each year. (Visit our supporters page for a full list of companies that have provided employee matching gifts to Town Hall.)

One such matching donor is Kathryn Shields, a Town Hall member and employee of the RealNetworks Foundation.

You have been a Town Hall donor since 2011. What initially attracted you to Town Hall and what keeps you engaged year after year?

After attending several events at Town Hall (and benefiting from the deeply-discounted ticket prices, thanks to other Town Hall donors), I felt that I had a responsibility to do my part. I want to keep Town Hall accessible to everyone regardless of ability to pay.

I love that Town Hall offers something for everyone. And with most tickets just $5 (and free for students), Town Hall provides an unbeatable opportunity to be inspired by and directly engage with local, national, and global writers, artists, and leaders. Honestly, there’s something almost every night at Town Hall that interests me! I’m proud to support such a truly “democratic” community asset.

In addition to your personal support of Town Hall, you also work for a company that provides a 1:1 match of your donations and volunteer hours. How has this ability to enable gifts from your employer affected your philanthropic giving?  

I feel fortunate to work for a company that matches my personal donations—up to $10,000 per year!  Prior to working for RealNetworks I made a fair amount of charitable donations, but once I knew that my contributions would be matched, I dramatically increased my charitable giving—in large part because I didn’t want the Foundation match to go to waste. I feel good about contributing to Town Hall because I’m confident that both my gift and the Foundation’s matching grant will be used wisely.

We are so fortunate to live in a city with so many corporate entities that match employee donations and volunteer hours, but not all employees take advantage of this benefit. Why have you chosen to take the time to enable corporate matching for so many years?

Actually, corporate/foundation matching grant programs are more rare these days than you may think. I survey our employees each year and they consistently say that the Foundation’s matching grant programs are meaningful employee benefits that they value. So, I encourage corporations and foundations that don’t currently have an employee matching grant program to consider initiating one.

In terms of my personal use of our Foundation’s matching grant program, it couldn’t be easier!  It typically takes less than two minutes to log in and submit a matching grant request. Our vendor sends an email to the charity that a matching grant request is waiting to be verified online. I believe that it is equally easy for nonprofits, like Town Hall, to verify receipt of employee donations and qualify for matching grants. From my perspective, matching grant programs are an effective way for companies and foundations to support both their employees’ philanthropic giving and the work of community-based nonprofits like Town Hall. It’s a true win-win.

There is no other place like Town Hall. Not in Seattle, not anywhere. What’s presented on our stages—robotics to food ethics, poetry slams to chamber music, even spelling bees and civic debates—is a real-time reflection of the curiosity, the creativity, and the diversity of our community.

As our fiscal year comes to a close, we invite you to make a year-end, tax-deductible donation in support of Town Hall programming. Your gift, in addition to your membership support, helps sustain our commitment to community.

In addition to the 450+ events you have come to expect during a Town Hall season, this season was marked by two highlights that exemplify not only Town Hall’s commitment to community engagement but our tremendous convening power: last fall’s City Council Debates and this spring’s GiveBIG: Lunch Break event.

During last fall’s City Council Debates, Town Hall partnered with neighborhood community groups to produce a debate in each district at a neighborhood venue (from Rainier Valley Cultural Center to Phinney Neighborhood Association), as well as the two at-large debates at the Seattle Central Library in partnership with CityClub. This was the most ambitious political program Town Hall has ever produced, and it offered nearly 700 people from across the city the opportunity to interact directly with their local representatives and engage in our political process. This style of programming is also a precursor to Town Hall’s 2017-18 season, which will offer programs in venues around the city while we perform major renovation to our 100-year-old First Hill home.

This spring’s GiveBIG: Lunch Break event is also emblematic of Town Hall’s commitment to community. On May 3, in partnership with The Seattle Foundation, Town Hall hosted 25 local nonprofits to share their missions and highlight our collective impact. In addition to the “nonprofit open house” in our lobby, eleven nonprofits took over the Great Hall for a three-hour, live-streamed showcase. As well as serving as a space for our community to get to know many of Seattle’s diverse nonprofits, this event highlighted the diversity of nonprofits that take the stage at Town Hall each year through our affordable rental program.

These events are just two examples of Town Hall’s convening power and why Town Hall is now more critical to our community than ever. As we lay the groundwork for a major renovation of our 100-year-old building, we rely more than ever on the support, advocacy and participation of the 4,000 members who keep this place accessible to all in our diverse community – members like you.

You are already supporting Town Hall in so many ways through your membership. Please consider making an additional year-end gift in support of our community’s cultural center — a place unlike anywhere in the world, a place that is uniquely for and about our community in Seattle.

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Town Green—now in its third year—is a cross-disciplinary series devoted to the environment, sustainability, and local wildlife. In addition to events with scientists, activists, and policy experts, Town Green provides a forum for all of us to share thoughts, voice opinions, and activate ideas in our community. This Saturday (April 16^th), we’ll be putting these conversations into practice: please join us for the 2016 Town Green Day of Service.

This year, we are working with Seattle Tilth’s Just Garden project to build raised bed vegetable gardens for low-income families and disadvantaged communities in Federal Way. Volunteers will gather at Light of Christ Lutheran Church at 9 a.m. to share a light breakfast and coffee while the Just Garden team introduces the event. We hope you’ll join us for hands-on learning about organic gardening as we help prep planting beds, plant seeds, and transplant starts—doing our part to support a bountiful harvest for Federal Way gardeners.

We want to thank all of you, our members, for helping us create such a vital discourse. From exploring the “Ancient Places of the Pacific Northwest” to an in-depth examination of the history and future of Washington logging, it has been a season of rich conversations and challenging ideas—and there are still six events remaining this season!

We are also deeply grateful for our foundation partners, the Wyncote Foundation NW and The Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation, whose generous support not only makes Town Green possible, but has helped it thrive this season! Ellen Ferguson, Trustee of the Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation (and Town Hall member) shared: “I support Town Hall because it’s a vital resource, bringing our community together to wrestle with ideas that impact us all.  To that end, I am thrilled to offer our support to the Town Green series, programming that takes many different paths to look at issues of the environment and sustainability, topics I care about deeply.”

In partnership with The Seattle Foundation
May 3, 2016 11am-2pm. FREE.

GiveBIG is The Seattle Foundation’s one-day, online charitable giving event, designed to raise money for our region’s hard-working nonprofits.

This year, Town Hall is stretching GiveBIG from the web to our stage. We have 25 diverse area nonprofits joining us at Town Hall to share their missions and highlight our collective impact—and you’re all invited!

Join us at Town Hall on May 3rd for the festivities! Grab lunch at Peasant Food Manifesto and catch a free show. Ten of our partner nonprofits are taking over the Great Hall for a three-hour, live-streaming showcase—so no matter when you stop by, something great will be waiting for you on stage!

Wander through our lobby to visit a nonprofit you know and love, and get to know some organizations you may not have met yet. Mobile giving stations will make it easy for you to GiveBIG and have your donations stretched by The Seattle Foundation! We hope you’ll join us to celebrate!

These awesome nonprofits will all be here for the party:

Stay tuned to the GiveBIG: Lunch Break event page for details and updates. And let us know you are coming on the GiveBIG: Lunch Break Facebook event page.

Don’t think you will be able to make it? No worries! We are live streaming the event as well.

Visit GiveBIG.seattlefoundation.org to learn more about this city-wide day of giving.